Читать книгу In the House of Wilderness - Charles Dodd White - Страница 11

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THEY FOUND the abandoned homeplace the day of the solstice. It had been a hard day’s walk through open meadows and burning sun. With their high-slung rucksacks, they looked like wayfarers fresh from the Appalachian Trail, a disguise that they relied on to avoid the curiosity of those who might view their trespass.

The house was far back from a barbed wire fence just beyond a huge pin oak and an encircling camouflage of scrub. Built on mortared bricks, much of its original clapboard siding remained in place, though one panel had been pried open long ago, exposing a now dormant bee colony that appeared to run the length of the entire back wall. Wolf marveled at the sight, said that what the hive would do with the elements of the earth owned a greater symmetry than anything men might realize by hand and iron.

Within, the floor joists remained in place though the tile had rotted to the point that they could not support the weight of anything heavier than a child. Nail points bristled everywhere. The window’s glass panes were gone and the sound of air coming through the house was that of a bad rumor in the ear.

With so much daylight left, they grounded their packs and began to work. They employed hatchets and hands to get what they could from the timbers of the house and a collapsed outbuilding some fifty yards distant under a wig of kudzu. Winter and Rain drew the nails from the wood and passed them down the line to Wolf, who beat them as straight as they could be beaten. Once they had collected enough salvage from the back end of the house they carried it forward and ripped the decay away, installed the improvised flooring of clapboard, slats flush as the rough hew would allow. By the hour of starshine they had covered the parlor and the front vestibule. They got all their gear off the ground and away from the hazard of snakes and built a cook fire in a hastily scratched hole a few feet beyond the granite stoop.

Their only food was oatmeal boiled in a Coleman skillet. Wolf squatted over it and eyed the burbling fare. A mood of exhaustion had come over him. Speech stopped as they watched the meal, waited for it, unable to talk until they conquered the obligation of their own bellies.

Wolf divvied the portions and they ate, finishing nearly as soon as they commenced and then wiping their fingers into every circle and slight contour of their bowls to glean whatever residue they might. The food was not much but still enough to tend them toward sleep and Wolf was the first to succumb, kissing both his wives goodnight before climbing the steps to the front of the house and collapsing on his sleeping roll.

The two women sat close and held each other. When their voices came they were like something ill-maintained put to use.

“I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

“I don’t either, baby. It’s okay.”

“Are you still hungry?”

“Yeah. You?”

“Yeah. Real bad.”

The wood fire rollicked and sprawled, flung out a parody of shadows against the brush.

Winter was up before the others the next morning, stoked the flames so they would serve for heating some water she’d fetched from a nearby spring, a thin dance of stream that she hoped was as clean as it appeared. There was only instant coffee to boil and pour out in their tin mugs. Everything else had been eaten to the bottom and the containers burned.

“We’ll need some things from town,” Winter told Wolf as soon as he stumbled into the sun of midmorning, having slept for the better part of twelve hours. He nodded, yawned, called Rain over to him. He looped his arms at her waist and drew her thin body toward him, nuzzled her at the nape of the neck until she began to twist against his hold.

“Hey there, Little Bit. I need you to resupply while me and Mama work on the next room. Think you can handle that?”

She said that she could.

“Good girl. Here, take this and be smart with it, okay?” he said, pressed a greasy roll of cash into her palm, slapped her lightly on the ass.

Rain tucked the money into her rucksack after emptying out her possibles on the floor next to her sleeping roll. She told Winter goodbye before hefting the pack onto her back and setting out toward town.

She walked down through the hardwood brakes until she came to a clearing that bordered a dirt road. Already the cicadas were sounding their tidal clamor. The noise was overwhelming and she imagined she could locate herself in relation to it, entangled but guided by this disaster of sound. She regretted the lack of water as soon as her sandals touched the dust of the road. For so long it had been one road after another. She wondered how many miles she had walked in the time she had been joined to Winter and Wolf. Not just in transit from one camp to the next, one home to another, however short lived, but all the steps in between. The lone hikes through the deep woods in search of a vision. The burning in the legs and the damaged soles of her feet as she walked out to the edge of herself to find the bright rim of pain where truth was purported to lie. How could she calculate and weigh that and what did it signify if she could?

After a while she caught a ride into Newport in the back of a pickup hauling a small tractor in a wagon behind it. She had to make room amid tarp and assorted farmhand tangle, and every bone in her frame rattled as the vehicle gained speed on the rough back road, teaching her gratitude for pavement. Then there were the smells too, of grass and gasoline and horseshit. When the driver turned onto the macadam ten minutes later it all eased and thinned in the quickened slipstream, everything then lost to speed.

She thanked the farmer for the ride at the parking lot of the Food City, offered him a five-dollar bill for the ride, which he refused before he wished her luck in this hot day that promised no respite and was gone on his way. She discreetly counted what Wolf had given her. Forty-six dollars. A strange and painful kind of wealth in itself. In her hand it felt like something ready to detonate.

The air-conditioning attacked her. The coolness was extraordinary, exposing the outdoor heat for the enemy it was. She had to pause to steady herself, understand what it was to be human for a quick moment in this world of controlled climate before she unslung her ruck and stowed it on the bottom rack of the shopping buggy. She strolled forward, her skin raising goosebumps.

The aisles, overburdened with product, were like an accusation. She laughed quietly, knew how absurd that would seem to the people around her that something as simple as twenty variations of bread and bowtie pasta could create panic, but it was true. To reconcile herself to it required everything she could summon. She wished that she had thought to write out a list, give herself a scaffold to build from, but she’d lacked paper or pencil. It was strange that Wolf had entrusted her with this errand. Was he simply disposing of less-efficient help at the homeplace, or was this supposed to be a compliment to her competency, a belief that she was the right person to provide for them all? She liked to think so.

He couldn’t have known, of course, how apt his choice had been, what kind of experience she’d had gathering food with so little in her pocket. She had learned that well as a girl when her mother would be pulled under by one of her depressions and everything about the house would have run to permanent ruin if it hadn’t been for her. All she had then was what could be scrounged or what some man might have left in the cushions of the couch or on her mother’s bedside dresser. Many meals of beans and salted meat cooked down in the Crock-Pot sent one Christmas by her grandparents, a pair of aloof Mississippians who never once deigned to cross any threshold between them and their child and grandchild. Tall and broad Presbyterians who observed the semblance of propriety by sending letters each season on watermarked stationary the color of warm butter, saying nothing really in the correspondence other than the affirmation that they still acknowledged their daughter and her bastard offspring as relation, poor and misbegotten though it may have been.

She threw in a couple of bags of pintos, along with split peas and black bean soup, some yellow grits. She picked up onions, potatoes, and carrots too, knowing that it would be nice to have something to put in the broth. She stood in front of the butcher’s case for a while, weighed the tantalizing promise of red meat before she realized it would be impossible to justify, given the budget. She did get two cases of Natural Light, more for the guarantee of clean water than the negligible alcohol it contained. Once she checked through she had ten dollars left, a good buffer against future privation. Wolf would be pleased with her thrift.

She declined bags when the clerk offered, packing everything into the ruck herself before she cinched and secured the flaps, tossed it over her back, and tightened the straps until the freight rode high across her shoulders. She set out.

Once she cleared town she stuck out her thumb each time she heard the approach of a vehicle. The sun was starting its long afternoon decline, but the heat was still prime, and as soon as she came to a shaded spot of two mimosa trees near the interstate access ramp, she dropped the pack and clawed inside to get at one of the cases of beer. The can was so cold in her hand that she nearly dropped it, but she managed to thumb the tab down and sucked a long and clean pull. Her throat simply opened and it was all gone in a matter of a few seconds. She crushed the can, stuffed it deep in the sack and opened a second, enjoyed the cool taste this time now that she could sense something more than the basic need for water. She fought back a wave of guilt at tearing into the supplies prematurely, promising herself she would deduct it from her share as soon as she got back to Wolf and Winter.

A black Honda SUV stopped on the shoulder and the electric window went down. A man in sunglasses and a green T-shirt leaned forward and asked if she needed a ride. She hesitated for a moment, halfheartedly screening the beer can from his view as she weighed how much she could trust the unsolicited offer.

“Don’t worry,” he said, tried a smile that seemed aware of its own awkwardness. “You can finish your drink on the road if you like.”

He was easy in his speech and unhurried. Had there been the faintest note of desperation or a need to convince, she would have bolted. She registered too the slim gold band on his left hand and this further eased her defenses.

“You got somewhere I can stow this beast,” she said, dragged the ruck upright.

“Sure. As long as you can spare me one of those beers.”

She fished another one out and handed it through the window to him. The back hatch clicked and sighed open. She loaded up and got in.

The road made smooth noise as they merged onto the interstate and he ratcheted up the volume on his stereo, some harmonica and folk lyrics. He opened his beer and sucked at the brimming foam.

“You not worried about the cops?”

He shrugged, turned the can up to get a good pull, then pocketed it in the console’s holder.

“I should ask you the same thing.”

“What, for hitchhiking?”

“No, buying underage.”

“I’m not. I’m twenty-two.”

“Bullshit you are.”

She was used to men studying her for something, but his attention seemed different. Less obvious than most, more penetrating.

“I’m nineteen. Most people think I look older. The cashier didn’t even card me.”

“Well, that’s one advantage of living out in the sticks, I guess. How far am I driving you, by the way? I’m not going all the way up to the Carolina line, if you’re trying to jump on the Appalachian Trail.”

“No, it’s not that far. I’ll tell you when we get on up to the exit. Just a few miles.”

He was satisfied with that, dropped the questions. From the corner of her eye she studied him, tried to get some idea of him in turn in order to balance out where they stood. On his jeans were several white ragged islands of paint that looked to be recent, but he lacked the squared hands of a manual laborer. His long fingers tapped lightly on the steering wheel as he kept a meticulous count against the music and the wild voice of the singer, a voice that summoned a kind of lonesome bluegrass wail. She could smell him, that stench of work on a body. It called back the stink of those men who had passed her money for a quarter of an hour. Used her like a tool for something they couldn’t do on their own. Maybe that was what he had in mind. Make her into something that submitted, something that didn’t matter.

“So, your wife approve of you picking up young girls on the side of the road. Hot little things to keep your motor tuned up?”

He released a smile so thin that she doubted whether she had actually seen it. He said nothing.

“Here, this is the exit,” she said a few miles later.

He slowed and coasted up to the crossroad.

“I can get out here.”

“No, this is my turn too. I can take you on a little further.”

And he turned then without waiting for her agreement. She sunk back into the seat as they cleared the nowhere of the rural road and climbed up toward the foothills, turned off the pavement and bounced over the gravel and dirt. He slowed and turned into the driveway of a farmhouse set back beyond a grove of mixed hardwoods. The vehicle settled into park.

“Hope this gets you pretty much where you’re headed.”

She couldn’t quite tell whether he was making a statement or posing another question.

“Yeah, we’re camped up the road just a little ways.”

“I see. Well, good luck.”

“Thanks.”

The hatch popped open and she went around to gather and bear the considerable heft of the pack.

“Hey.”

“Yeah?”

“Could you spare another one of those beers? You know, for the taxi service?”

She made a face he couldn’t see in his rearview.

“Sure. Hold on a sec.”

She got another sweating can from the box and secured everything down before tossing the ruck on and coming around to the driver’s side.

“Thanks. You take care, okay?” he told her.

“Sure.”

He flipped the unopened can into the empty seat beside him and crunched up the driveway. She watched him swing behind the screen of trees, his flat hand stuck out the window in farewell.

She stood a moment staring there at where he’d gone, sipped the rest of her beer before she went around to his mailbox and stuck the can inside. Then she turned to the road and headed back toward family.